Official PA daily: Israel’s creation was a “crime against humanity” and “international conspiracy”

Op-ed by Muwaffaq Matar, regular columnist for Al-Hayat Al-Jadida
“The attempt on the part of [Israel’s] new leaders to extract recognition from the leadership of the Palestinian people that Israel is Jewish or that Israel is the state of the Jews, [amounts to] an insistence on falsifying the historical facts and events; Israel’s political leaders and other intellectuals seem as if they were trying to change the direction of the earth’s rotation. The Palestinian refugees’ right of return depends on the free decision and personal will of [each] Palestinian refugee, as it is a sacred human right which no power in the world can prevent its possessor from realizing. In addition, it is a right which will never become obsolete…
May 15, 1948 was and remains the date of a crime against humanity which has been going on for 66 years; this day is the essence and the symbol of a huge international conspiracy aimed at putting an end to the existence of a tranquil, peace-loving people. This was the day in which Israel was used as an occupation state and spearhead [against the Palestinian people].”